The Cake Is A Lie from Geeky Teas. . .

The tea’s name, “The Cake Is A Lie,” is a “Portal” reference. It’s a PlayStation game in which you use your wits to survive through a corrupt company’s testing facility. You’re told at the beginning that cake will be served at the end of your testing, but spray painted messages begin to pop up saying “the cake is a lie.” And it is. The company expects you to die, so why would it prepare a cake?

So it’s kind of fitting that I don’t think this tea quite tastes like cake. (A LIE. Though I think they meant it to taste like cake.)

I think it tastes like that delicious crunchy sugar-cream glaze one finds on cinnamon buns, danish, or glazed donuts. Which is ALSO delicious.

I don’t know if I oversteeped, but I also detected a sort of coffee tang here. Coffee is not one of the ingredients. It might be a note in the underlying black tea. Or it might just be in my head.

Because when I think donuts, I think donut shops. I think about how, when we were in elementary school, when it was your birthday, your mom typically purchased enough donuts or cupcakes for the whole class. They got distributed at lunch.

I’d always follow Mom into the coffee shop to procure those donuts. And it always reeked of coffee and cigarettes.

Yes, it used to be legal to smoke inside eating establishments. And some places were way worse than others.

Bars and donut shops were the absolute worst. Bars because the smell would mix with skunked beer. Donut shops because the old guys who sat around drinking coffee at the counter would smoke really low-end cigarettes which have a distinct smell.

Smelling vaguely like coffee and cheap cigarettes all day didn’t deter me from birthday joy, though. I’d have that donut with lunch, and cake with dinner.

So really, I guess the donuts and the cake aren’t that different. Was the cake a lie, after all?

Like this:

"Hey, everybody! I'm Leah, a graphic designer from Pennsylvania, United States. I live with my husband and rescue mutt in a house with colorful walls. I love fonts, colors, animals, flowers, novels, illustration, geeking out, and -- obviously! -- tea. I've only been heavily into tea for about a year, but I've found I tend to prefer loose blended black dessert teas. I normally drink them hot western style without anything added; if I add in some vanilla almond milk or honey, I promise I'll mention it! When I'm not blogging here, I'm blogging at leahlucci.com/starling or posting to Instagram (super_starling), so come say hi!"